by Duncan, Ian
Cole tightened his grip on the AR pistol. He had his thumb on the safety.
Walsh drummed his fingers on the arm of his chair for a moment, making a point of avoiding eye contact with Emily, either trying to compose himself or come up with a different approach. When he looked up again, it was still Cole he addressed.
“Look, you’ve been through this before, right? You know what it’s like out here. I mean, come on. We’re kind of beyond the realm of legalities here.” He flashed his big bleached smile. “What I’m saying is, I can help you, and you can help me. I already have a vested interest in keeping you alive. You, of course, have an inherent interest in staying that way. We can work together, and we can make a lot of money. I think that’s a hell of a lot better deal than you got in the last outbreak.”
Cole felt his blood pressure rising.
“I know what you’re thinking.” Walsh grinned and shook his finger at Cole, the skin around his eyes tightening into crow’s feet. “You’re thinking, how do I know this guy won’t just vamoose once he’s got his footage, am I right?”
Cole’s gaze was unblinking. He tapped his trigger finger on the side of the AR. Walsh’s man seemed to be watching Cole, though the dark lenses made it impossible to know for certain. He was probably focused on the Glock lying on the table, trying to anticipate the moment Cole might snatch it up.
“Here’s the thing,” Walsh went on, “I could give you a stack of money now, but it’d do you no good. We could sign a contract, but what good’s a contract if you’re dead, right? Here’s the honest-to-god truth: I need you. I need a celebrity to market this show. I need you to be the face of this thing. You’re going to be a lot more famous than I ever will be. And that’s going to make the rest of us rich, too. All that is to say, I’d be a damned fool not to make sure we get your ass out of this alive.”
Cole said nothing. Emily huffed through the respirator.
Walsh held up both hands. “Come on, Cole, what do you say?”
Cole stood up, the sentry reacting visibly at the sight of the AR pistol, bringing the barrel of his M4 up several inches before he checked himself.
Walsh froze.
“Well, sir,” Cole said, “I’d say you’re probably right.” Cole looked at him across the table. “I may not be able to stop you from videoing us. But if I ever see you again, man-to-man, I swear I’ll shoot you right in the face.”
Walsh stared at Cole, all the humor gone from his eyes, the pupils of them cold and black. “Your funeral,” he said. He left the table in a hurry, his sentry stepping aside and glancing once more at Cole and Emily before he followed.
Twenty
COLE WATCHED them walk to the armored vehicle, watched the way they guarded Walsh, the way the man with the machine gun bent to lend him a hand up the metal rungs welded onto the armor plating. That they were ex-military and being paid very well was obvious enough. Mercenaries.
Cole shut the door and threw the bolt.
“Well, you’re quite the negotiator,” Emily said.
“You’re not so bad yourself,” Cole returned.
From outside the house came the now-familiar peal of the air horn.
“Shit,” Cole said.
Emily had just taken the respirator off. Red lines marked her pale cheeks. “What’s that?”
“They’re calling them,” Cole said. He went back to the dining room and started getting his gear in order.
“What do you mean, ‘calling them’?”
“They’re trying to attract a horde of coughers.”
Emily looked stunned.
“Ringing the dinner bell,” Cole said bitterly. He replaced the AR pistol and got his pack on, holstering the Glock in the vest. “Are there any other guns in the house?”
Emily still looked dazed. “Just this one.”
Cole had the full-sized AR in his hands. “Do you have any ammo or extra mags for it?”
“In my husband’s nightstand.”
Cole looked at her soberly. “We’ll need it. You’d better pack a bag, a backpack if you have one, to keep your hands free. Bottles of water, some food. We’ve got minutes, not hours.”
Emily nodded, her throat visibly constricting as though the whole situation were a lump to be swallowed down painfully. She moved away stiffly, jumping when the air horn sounded again. Her voice broke. “How can they do that?”
Cole laid his hand on her back. “Come on, I’ll help you.”
She wiped her eyes and crossed her arms, holding the pistol carelessly now. Cole followed her into the hall, through another door into the master suite, where stood a king-sized mahogany poster bed flanked by matching chests-of-drawers. Emily went to the nearest one and opened the top drawer, looking into it. She left the pistol on the nightstand by the lamp.
“Take what we need,” she said, and crossed the room to a walk-in closet.
Cole looked in the drawer and found the original clamshell case for a Sig Sauer P226, the factory stickers and serial numbers and barcodes still plastered to the side of it. He unlocked the plastic hasps and opened the lid. Inside, the foam padding cradled a spare nine-millimeter magazine already loaded with brass-jacketed hollow points, a cleaning rod, a trigger lock still sealed in its plastic bag, and a fifty-round box of shells that felt as though it were probably more than half-empty. Deeper in the drawer was an inexpensive Kydex holster of the kind gun store salesmen never fail to pitch at the end of a sale.
Emily came out of the closet wearing jeans, a maroon Marmot jacket, and a beanie cap, an avocado green backpack in her hand. “I’ve some foodstuffs downstairs. I suppose that’s rather more important than extra clothing right now, isn’t it?”
Cole nodded and watched her leave the room. He discarded the trigger lock, unloaded the Sig Sauer and cased it along with the holster, planning to give her the Glock 43 and the AR pistol since they should be easier for her to handle. He would bring the 226 all the same, but he was starting to feel like a walking gun store. What he really needed was another experienced shooter. Here he was, in one of the worst binds of his life, and he was accumulating liabilities faster than assets. He at least hoped Emily had been exaggerating when she told Walsh she was nine-months pregnant.
Cole was leaving the room when his eyes fell on a tiny knit cap sitting atop a dressing table. He stopped, strangely arrested by it. He reached out for it slowly, holding it dumbly in his fingers as though it were a relic, and for the briefest moment he had a vision, as it were, of Emily’s life: her expectation, the tiny nodding head, fatherless, that would be warmed by that hat, a face ever so small and pink from her womb, the entire scene sacred in a way Cole could scarcely comprehend. He stood holding the cap for a moment longer before he slid the backpack off his shoulders and folded it once and tucked it deep into an inner pocket.
He found Emily in the kitchen, running up the zipper on the green backpack, bulging now. “I’m ready,” she said, before he could ask.
Cole spent the next ten minutes giving her a crash course on the AR pistol, explaining, too, that if something should happen to him, the larger AR shared the same controls, only with a longer barrel and stock. She followed everything he said with rapt attention, nodding quickly at each point, and she mastered the reload faster than he had when he’d learned, if he was honest.
When he moved on to the pistol, she insisted on keeping her husband’s Sig Sauer, since it was the only gun she’d ever fired and that much, at least, would be familiar. Cole admitted it was the more formidable weapon, with more than twice the capacity, so long as she could handle it.
“I held you at bay with it, didn’t I?” Emily’s eyes shone with the first mirth Cole had seen there. Maybe he could hang with this girl after all.
“Well,” he said, “I wanted you to feel like you were doing well.”
“Bollocks,” she huffed.
Another blast fr
om the air horn took the smiles from their faces.
“We need a car,” Cole said, thinking aloud more than expecting an answer from Emily.
“I don’t drive,” she said. “I’ve only been here six weeks from Wales. My husband took his car when he”—her voice faltered. She shook her head and cleared her throat, as though grief were somehow a physical affliction. “I’m sorry.”
Cole didn’t know what to tell her. Getting infected did strange things to people. Her husband might have only driven around the block, gotten out, and climbed a tree, or he might have driven to Houston and tried to charter a plane. “I lost someone, too,” was all he could think to say.
“We had locator apps on our phones for each other,” Emily explained, “but none of the data services seem to be working now.
“We can get another car,” Cole said, then felt terrible when he realized she’d probably been thinking more of her husband himself. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—”
“It’s okay,” Emily said. “Don’t start walking on eggshells. He left in the middle of the night, and I have to assume he’s, he’s dead, right?”
Cole nodded.
“I have to start thinking about carrying on like he would have wanted.”
Cole opened his mouth just as the sound of a machine gun opened up and they heard the front windows of the house implode, the rounds penetrating the house and blowing through the plaster into the breakfast area, the oil painting on the wall exploding and the frame flying into splinters before Cole could get around the counter and pull her to the floor, dropping the AR and shielding her body as she covered her head and screamed and several of the upper cabinets exploded, flour or baking soda filling the air.
“Stay down and follow me!” Cole shouted.
The rattling of the machine gun continued, but no more rounds seemed to penetrate the kitchen. Cole could guess easily enough that they were blowing out the lower windows, either to flush Cole and Emily from the house or to let the Cord zombies in. After all, the whole point of their damn show was to see them fighting for their lives.
Cole grabbed the AR and began sniper crawling across the tile into the breakfast nook, where crumbs of plaster littered the floor and windows were shattered, the venetian blinds hanging on their cordage like a broken marionette. He made it to the door and reached up to unlock it, looking back to see Emily crawling with difficulty behind him, pulling her backpack along beside her and holding the AR pistol.
The machine gun ceased fire. Whether the gunner had only paused to reload or had accomplished his objective remained to be seen.
Cole swung the door open and scrambled over the threshold, taking up a position on one knee to cover the backyard. It was not a large area, perhaps fifty by fifty feet square, with cast iron furniture on a hardscape patio and a weathered privacy fence forming the perimeter. No one in the yard and no movement that he could see between the slats of the fence. Cole thought to look up for the drone, but didn’t see it or hear its rotors. No doubt they’d be watching.
Emily crawled out onto the patio, coughing.
“Are you okay?” Cole shouted.
She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “I thought they needed us!”
“They’re pissed,” Cole said. It was the only explanation he had to offer. He helped her get to her feet. She had the Sig Sauer in the Kydex holster clipped to her belt, though Cole wasn’t convinced it wouldn’t beat her to death as she ran. “You sure you’re good?”
“Fantastic,” Emily managed.
Cole helped her put the backpack on. “Let’s get going. This could be fast. Remember what I told you about the AR.”
They were moving across the yard now, toward a gate that led to the driveway. “I can forgive you for anything but shooting me in the back,” Cole said over his shoulder. Emily stayed right on his heels and when they reached the gate Cole was relieved to see she had the instinct to look back, covering the rear of the house with the AR pistol.
Cole unlatched the gate and eased it open, the hinges squeaking. The dead cougher still lay on the driveway outside the garage door, the blood pooled on the concrete already dried to a dull brown.
“Oh my god,” Emily said.
Cole glanced at her to gauge her reaction and saw the HEPA respirator still hanging around her neck by its straps.
“Get that mask on,” he said.
She reached for it immediately, cupping it over her face and stretching the elastic band over her head. Cole advanced toward the alley with the AR leveled, while behind him, Emily cinched the respirators straps and took several labored breaths to free the valves.
Cole glanced both ways down the alley. Clear. He looked back to Emily, who was staring uneasily at the dead cougher as though it were more than a mere body—a portent, perhaps, of what was to come.
“Let’s go,” Cole whispered.
Emily rejoined him and Cole could see the terror in her eyes. He squeezed her arm. She turned her blue eyes on him, more pallid and beautiful in that light than he had seen them yet. Cole wished he could offer more in the way of reassurance.
“One other piece of advice,” he said. “Don’t look up into the trees.”
Twenty-One
THE SOUND OF FOOTFALLS echoed off the tile interior of the men’s room. Through a gap between the stall dividers, Trubilinski saw a dark figure pass by. The steps continued to the bank of urinals, confidently enough to be believed. No hesitation in their cadence.
Trubilinski waited while the man stood at the urinal. By now he would have easily seen, beneath the door of the furthest stall, the general’s shoes and pants legs at the toilet. Trubilinski listened intently, but heard no trickle of urine. The seconds the man stood at the urinal were only what moments he needed to finalize his plan.
The urinal flushed, loudly in the harsh acoustics of the room, masking, at first, the sudden rush of steps and the vicious kick that sent the stall door flying inward, striking, not the knees of the intended victim, but the toilet paper dispenser with a hollow plastic gong.
Trubilinski’s assassin hesitated in the doorway, likely due to the shock of seeing, where an entire victim had been assumed, only an empty pair of shoes on the floor and khaki trousers draped over the toilet seat, the pants legs starched heavily enough to appear, for the first twelve inches they extended upward, as if they contained legs.
The batteries in the panty hose gained momentum through the air as though swung by a trebuchet, striking the back of the assassin’s head and felling him headlong into the stall.
The man was not knocked unconscious, as Trubilinski had hoped, but when he scrambled to his feet and launched himself at his target, the old general flung a handful of white sand into his face and side-stepped, letting him fall to the tile floor with his hands at his eyes, screaming, until the batteries came down on him again, this time from a shorter and more accurate tether, breaking his fingers on successive blows before they crushed his skull.
By the time Trubilinski was satisfied that the man would not rise, bright blood seeped along the gridwork lines of the grout and slung flecks of it peppered the ceiling, the mirror, and every wall in the bathroom. He let go the weighted hosiery and steadied himself with his hands grasping the loose skin above his bare knees. He had not killed a man in close proximity since the war. He watched the hallway leading to the door. Nothing to keep a tourist from happening upon them, stopping suddenly, a stammered question, perhaps, before they turned and fled and called the police.
When his heart and breathing slowed Trubilinski retrieved his pants, shoes, and socks from the stall. His knees ached from the cramped posture he had taken up, perched on the toilet seat of the stall beside his trap, waiting. He was not even sure now how quickly he could walk. He dressed hurriedly and then, with shaking hands, used his fingernails to withdraw the SIM card from his smart phone, which he flushed down the toilet. Th
e phone itself he would cast into the Potomac. As long as they could not locate him it would matter little what they believed he had done.
The assassin’s legs still spasmed as though enlivened by a current of electricity. Trubilinski stepped past the body to the sink and washed his hands and splashed his face with water. He dabbed his eyes with paper towels, wiped his hands, and stared for a moment at the unrecognizable pulp of his would-be assassin’s face. He discarded the paper towels and stooped and ran down the zipper of the man’s jacket, finding a shoulder holster in which was secured a compact .22 pistol fitted with a short titanium suppressor. That the assassin had not attacked Trubilinski with the pistol drawn meant he had either planned something other than a quick death, or he had intended to make it appear accidental or self-inflicted—a broken neck on the bathroom floor or hung by his own belt in the stall, perhaps. Trubilinski tucked the pistol in his waistband, covered it with his shirt, and left the bathroom. What was about to happen in that city would render the scene he left behind him only another gruesome tableau in a nation surrendered to the plague.
One thing Trubilinski knew for sure: the man was better off dead.
Twenty-Two
COLE AND EMILY ran at least a quarter mile of the concrete alley, splashing through puddles and turning their guns on every corner as they passed it. Cole had, by now, lost all sense of direction in the neighborhood, whether he was running deeper into the residential district or headed out of it, and he supposed it was only a philosophical question now of whether it mattered. He had seen no cars parked in any of the driveways, and all the garage doors were closed. Any one of those garages could contain a car, the keys lying on a countertop inside or hanging on a hook by the door; or any one of those houses could be guarded by armed homeowners and the attempt to break in could cost both of them their lives.